THE best sports people in the word are constantly training. The most interesting point to the outside observer is what kind of training they’re actually doing.
Sports stars spend by far the largest amount of their training time and effort going over the basic actions and functions of their field.
When you first think about it, it seems silly for a grade-A swimmer to be doing laps all morning, he or she already knows how to swim. And what about Shaquille O’Neil standing in his backyard on his own shooting hoops for hours on end? And what’s Greg Norman doing teeing off a hundred balls into a net each day? It’s all got to do with the basics.
You could initially think that those basics would be covered quite well and don’t need to be relearned or studied or practised. Shaq will get plenty of chances to shoot hoops in a game so why bother practising that small simple action instead of working on strategies and crowd pressure?
The Shark is going to get plenty of different locations to tee off from with different conditions, surely he could learn more on the green than in the nets. But these are the top players in their field so they must be doing something right. First of all they certainly don’t think they know it all or that the basics are below them.
Now let’s put this in a business perspective. A manager has basic actions he or she carries out. Quite possibly he or she has never looked at what they are. The necessary skills of a manager do vary as they become less basic but the really basic ones never change regardless of industry, country, position, skill level. One is observation, another is evaluation of information, another is vision towards a specific goal, another is the ability to stay on target and follow the hard-won rules and methods or policies of operation.
And the one that might be the most basic of all is communication.
A manager communicates directions to his or her staff. The best managers are those who have the best communication skills.
One could think that a manager gets enough practice in communicating during a normal workday. But what would Shaq or The Shark say about that? Correct, it’s not enough.
The manager who goes and spends time talking to customers for the sake of talking to customers, not to sell them anything, is practising and will improve his/her most basic managerial skill. There are lots of ways communication can be practised in and outside of work. After all, communication is between people and there are plenty of places to find people. Just go talk to someone and try to communicate an idea, try to get them to do something, try to get some exchange of ideas, get a reply, bring about a new understanding in them, anything and try to do it with subjects that have nothing to do with your job.
There is a basic factor that comes before learning anything and that is the willingness to learn. If you already know it all, you won’t learn. Yes, yes, we all know this point, but when was the last time you saw a manager actually learning to communicate before giving a verbal order?
Interest in the subject is therefore a key to learning your basics. Interest, as an item, is generated by you. You are the one who has to be interested.
Swimming pools, basketballs and golf balls are not at all interesting unless you make them so. The same goes for everything associated with your basic managerial skills.
What’s so interesting about shooting 100 hoops from the same spot with no outside influence? Don’t ask Shaq, it’s obvious to him. The Shark is absolutely fascinated in how the 87th ball takes to the air so maybe he could help you, but maybe he’s now studying what happens when he hits the 88th ball.
If the top professionals in any field work most heavily on their basics, what are those at the lower end doing? If you watch them for a while you’ll see them doing anything but being interested in and studying their basics.
